Entirely agree with you. The firewall is much easier to handle generally, but my own favourite tweak to networking is the ability to quickly connect or disconnect from any available networks via the network center icon. Overall these tweaks serve as a reminder of just how awful the networking control in Vista/2K8 could feel and what an improvement 7 has made in important areas like that. I hate going back to either now.

How does it fair performance wise? It's all very well and good having a functional and easy to operate UI, but if the underpinnings don't really ammount to much then its a moot point as most people would opt for a 3rd party firewall that actually worked. I was never a fan of Windows firewall, especialy in XP, and though Vista was better in respect to configuration, it was still rubbish at performing the task it was designed to do. I fear the problem we have here is that if Microsoft made their firewall too good, it would only comeback to bite them in the ass legaly. What we have then is a firewall that's "less than perfect" for the sake of not upsetting 3rd party vendors, and unfortunately a "less than perfect" firewall is practically useless, something proven time and time again when compared against other firewall solutions. A bit like a condom with a hole in it.

(Anti-leak control has always been a Windows firewall weak spot, one that is all to easily exploited and one that Microsoft never really seemed too concerned about. You could help with that by spending half a day setting and testing rules, but what average user is going to want to spend time configuring something that other solutions provide out of the box with minimal user interaction?)